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  3. What Is the Paperless Office ? It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "

What Is the Paperless Office ? It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "

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问题                     What Is the Paperless Office ?
    It became a classic example of a techno-Utopian prophecy becoming faulty. The notion of the "paperless office", which dates back to the 1960s, sounded plausible enough. As computers began to spread and display technology improved, it seemed obvious that more and more documents would be written, distributed and read in electronic form, rather than on paper.
    What actually happened was that global consumption of office paper more than doubled in the last two decades of the 20th century, as digital technology made printing cheaper and easier than ever before. Not even the rise of the internet stemmed the tide. The web’s billions of pages provided a vast new source of fodder for the world’s humming printers. Although E-mail did away with much paper-based correspondence, some older, bosses who fears technology insisted on having their E-mails printed out so they could scribble their responses in pen for their secretaries to type in and send off.
    Yet the prediction seems to be coming true at last. American office workers’ use of paper has actually been in decline since 2001. What changed? The explanation seems to be sociological rather than technological. A new generation of workers, who have grown up with e-mail, word processing and the internet, feel less of a need to print documents out than their older colleagues did. Offices are still far from paperless, but the trend is clear. So does this mean that other apparently discredited technological prophecies might also benefit from a similar reversal of fortune?
    A closer look at the ones that have staged comebacks suggests three ways in which they could. The paperless office shows how a sociological shift can make the difference: although the technology did not change very much, its users did. In some cases, however, straightforward improvements in technology turn things around. As broadband grew, many predictions made during the boom—about the value of online advertising and the volume of e-commerce, for example—came true after all, albeit a few years late.
    A third way in which seemingly dying technologies can be revived is through an external shock. Perhaps the best example is the electric car. Growing concern about climate change, worries about energy security and a spike in the oil price have since effected an astonishing turnaround. Carmakers are now racing to build petrol-electric hybrid vehicles, and these are widely seen as steps on the way to all-electric ones.
According to the passage, the popularization of computers had led to______.
选项 A、the decline of belief in techno-Utopian prophecy
B、the increase of documents in electronic forms
C、the increase in the consumption of office paper
D、the improvement in the technology of printing
答案C
解析 推理判断题。本题考查电脑普及所带来的后果。第一段提到：…it seemed obviousthat more and more documents would be written，distributed and read in electronic form，rather than on paper．由此可知，随着技术的进步，纸张的使用量将会减少，而第二段又提到：What actually happened was that global consumption of office paper more than doubled inthe last two decades of the 20th century．．．事实是全球的办公纸张消费量在20世纪的后20年翻了两番，因此选[C]项。[B]项是人们原以为会发生的现象；[A]项“技术乌托邦信仰的消亡”和[D]项“印刷技术的提高”原文没提及。
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